More students have been applying for special exam access arrangements since the pandemic as they are anxious about being assessed in a crowded exam hall, education leaders have suggested.
Young people and their parents have a greater awareness of the support they can ask for from schools and colleges to help them cope with exams, headteachers’ unions have said.
It comes as pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will receive their GCSE results on Thursday.
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA), said the cohort of students receiving their exam results this summer were “more fragile” in terms of socialisation and “less comfortable in big groups”.
He said schools and colleges were having to make “difficult decisions” about whether to grant a growing number of requests from students who want to sit their exams in smaller rooms away from the main exam hall.
He told the PA news agency: “It’s a post-Covid phenomenon. Not only are these young people making these requests, but they are coming to the college with a note from parents, or a note from parents and the GP, supporting the request.”
Access arrangements – which can include providing extra time, readers and scribes – are most commonly used to help candidates with disabilities and learning difficulties take their GCSE and A-level exams.
Ofqual figures, released in November last year, showed there were 556,435 approved access arrangements for GCSE, AS and A-levels exams in England in 2022/23, up by 8.7% on the previous year.
When asked what had led to the rise, Mr Watkin said: “I think generally it is anxiety. Anxiety arising from being in an odd situation for an extended period of time, but also anxiety arising from having missed some learning, anxiety arising from just being uncomfortable in crowded environments.”
He added: “The trouble is, if you’ve got hundreds of kids all asking for that special arrangement, a school or a college isn’t going to have the capacity, the number of rooms or the number of invigilators to meet the needs of every young person.
“So they’re having to make some difficult decisions and sometimes it’s trying to identify where young people have a normal anxiety associated with doing a public exam as opposed to a particular special condition.”
Guidance from the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) on exam access arrangements says candidates with social, emotional and mental health needs may require “alternative rooming arrangements” – where a smaller group of candidates can sit exams in a room away from the main exam hall.
It adds: “Alternative rooming arrangements must reflect the candidate’s normal and current way of working in internal school tests and mock examinations.
“Nervousness, low-level anxiety or being worried about examinations is not sufficient grounds for separate invigilation within the centre.”
Sarah Hannafin, head of policy at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said members had reported a rise in requests for access arrangements – “particularly for small rooms” to take exams away from the main hall.
She told PA: “I think some of that is representative of some of the anxiety that young people are facing as a result of what they’ve gone through over the past few years.
“So we have definitely seen a rise in the requests for access arrangements, just because those young people feel more comfortable in a smaller room to be able to take their exams.”
Ms Hannifan said the rise in requests was likely to be as a result of a variety of factors – including the pandemic and growing mental health problems.
She added: “I think probably as well, there is more awareness amongst students and parents of what is available to help students cope with exams or get the support that they need.”
This is the first year since the pandemic that pupils in all three nations – England, Wales and Northern Ireland – have taken GCSE exams without any significant mitigations to grading.
Tom Middlehurst, curriculum and assessment specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said the rise in access arrangements from pupils could be attributed to a range of factors – including “higher levels of anxiety” post-Covid and the cost-of-living crisis.
He added that there had been “increased pressure from parents” to apply for special access arrangements in exams which may have been driven by a “sense of unfairness”.
In England, exams regulator Ofqual said it expected this year’s GCSE results to be “broadly similar” to last year, when grades were restored to pre-pandemic levels.
In Wales and Northern Ireland, exam regulators have said they aim to return to pre-pandemic grading levels this summer – a year later than in England.
It comes after Covid-19 led to an increase in top GCSE grades in 2020 and 2021, with results based on teacher assessments instead of exams.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), said the “big rise” in requests for special exam arrangements had put “pressure” on colleges in terms of capacity and logistics.
He added: “I think there’s been a better understanding of the special needs that students have as well so it’s not all negative.
“If what we’re doing in schools and colleges is trying to understand the diversity of students and the diversity of their needs, that’s not a bad thing.”
